


Old Memories And Dust

by Vetinari



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Sort of Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 22:22:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9569321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vetinari/pseuds/Vetinari
Summary: Clara gets lost in the TARDIS,again. Had she mentioned that the TARDIS is an absolutecow?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Posting an old(ish) piece here. This was actually written as an interlude as part of this ridiculous epic I had planned. Embarrasingly there's quite a lot of this thing on my hard-drive but I don't think the rest of it is likely to see the light of day. But this piece was completed and I think it works reasonably well on it's own merits.
> 
> As always I own absolutely none of this apart from the slightly original ideas in the non-existent plotline of this little thing.
> 
> Bonus points if anyone works out what the sneaky crossover is before it's outright stated.

**Old Memories and Dust.**

 

Clara wandered around the TARDIS' corridors angrily. The bitch had "lost" her room. Again. She shivered, drawing her nightgown closer around her. It was the middle of the night! She'd only gotten up for a glass of water, and when she came back? Her room was gone.

 

After kicking the wall angrily she'd wanted to head to the library, thinking that she'd be able to find a good book and perhaps get some sleep in in one of the comfy chairs The Doctor kept around.

 

But no. The library hadn't been there. And then the way back hadn't been there. As in one minute behind her there had been open corridor, and the next? A dead end.

 

Had she mentioned that the TARDIS was an evil cow?

 

She'd gotten turned around, and twisted about so many times that she literally had no idea where in the ship she was. She was sure it was getting colder too. She was nowhere she'd been before, that's for sure. This bit of the TARDIS was strange; the decor had changed from the strangely warm toned blue-ish metal Clara was used to, to a weird crusty corally look a while back. And now she'd found another style change, everything had gone dark and gothic - Lot's of stone, flocked wallpaper and dark wood. There were even some creepy bats a few minutes ago. It was strangely sinister.

 

Clara tried yet another door. Locked. She hated the evil cow. Especially since The Doctor always seemed amused when she tried to tell him what was going on. Sighing loudly and grumbling to herself Clara took the left fork at the junction, it was the darker of the two. She figured the TARDIS was trying to put her off going that way, so she'd go that way. Noting the weird gargoyle in case the TARDIS ever let her back towards life she continued forward.

 

Huh weird it was getting warm again, and there was another door to her left. She rattled the knob, not having much hope that it would open, none of the others she'd passed so far had.

 

Oh wait. It did. Clara looked in curiously. Nothing but cobwebs and bizarrely a dead Christmas tree, needles surrounding it on the floor. The bare twiggy branches hung forlornly with tinsel, bang in the centre of the room. Ri-ight. Clara continued on the way she'd been going. Hopefully the Old Cow would let up soon. This was getting old.

 

There was a sudden gust of wind, the air buffeting her backwards as if trying to keep her away from something. Eyes streaming Clara doggedly pushed forward, she'd just noticed another door. An old fashioned paneled wood TARDIS-blue thing, with what looked like a really large, really rusty tent peg nailed through it at eye height - about where a nameplate would normally be.

The door was unlocked. Hah! Take that witch!

 

Clara slammed the door shut behind her, and leaned against it, eyes closed gasping in annoyed triumph.

 

She looked around curiously and was shocked by what she saw. She was standing on a hill in what looked like a meadow. Green grass, bright blue sky, sun above her shining brightly. She could even hear birds singing. Turning around she noticed that the door was just …there. It was just standing there on the crest of the hill in its frame looking utterly incongruous. The pointy half of the giant nail poking through. She walked all around the door, nope still standing there no visible means of support in sight. The pointy end of the nail was visible from both sides. Weird.

 

She looked around, wall in one direction, trees and more hills in the other. She moved down the gentle slope towards a distant oak tree, it looked like a nice place to take a nap.

 

When she woke up feeling warm and rested Clara couldn't resist the urge to explore the strange meadow. Moving around slowly to the other side of the tree Clara realized that the grass was slowly giving way to clover. Cresting another gentle hill she was once again shocked by what was there, a car next to the other end of the stonewall. A big black car. In the middle of a field, which was completely surrounded by stonewalls. Huh - this was the TARDIS she supposed.

 

The car was one of those huge American ones from the 50s back when cars were all chrome and flashes of white paint. It said "Desoto" on the front bonnet in large shiny letters. It was in nice condition, but weirdly the windows had been painted completely black. She cursorily rattled the door handle, but as expected it was locked.

 

Clara looked at the other more normal object at this end of the field. A small stone hut. She entered and immediately realized that it was another TARDIS room. She must have found another exit. It was a dark moody place, but damn it was far nicer than her room in the TARDIS.

 

Grumbling to herself about bitchy TARDISes Clara decided to have a bit of a nosey. She'd had a feeling that she hadn't been supposed to enter that field, and she suspected that this room was even more off limits from the vibe the TARDIS was giving her. Served the old cow right.

 

"Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound."

 

Clara stepped fully inside, peering around in curiosity that was at least partially fuelled by vindictive spite at this point. She may have been a teacher with the patience of a saint (her putting up with The Doctor for so long was proof of that she felt) but even she had limits. The TARDIS had been playing this game with her for too long.

 

For all the gloom the room was strangely homey. The walls were covered in punk band posters blaring out The Ramones, The Stooges, The Clash, the Sex Pistols etc. Well most of the posters were for Punk Bands, Clara was bemused by the David Bowie poster that looked really out of place almost hidden away next to an old fashioned record player.

 

Rifling through the LPs and CDs Clara was surprised by the variety of genres in evidence; it was a complete range from classical, romantic, punk, rock and even some country. There were hundreds if not thousands of records neatly stacked on shelves all over the place, hell there were also CDs, and plenty of other things that she suspected were different music storage formats.

 

There was a large, old fashioned and above all comfy looking sofa taking up space by one wall, with an old analogue telly positioned in front of it. The floor surrounding the comfy seating area was covered in plates and bowls, some of them full of a crusty brownish substance. Huh whoever had lived here had been spoilt, if Clara had dared to leave anything like that lying about she'd have soon heard about it.

 

There was even a mini-kitchen area in the corner, with all the usual ephemera. There was a mysterious glassed over alcove in the wall, plenty of cupboards, a futuristic looking fridge and a microwave on the little worktop area. Clara peered into the fridge dubiously remembering The Doctor's strange ideas about food.

 

Oh gross, it was full of bags of blood, and beer. She poked one of the bags cautiously it wobbled. Lifting it up she noted that it was human from the label, AB positive. Ew. She slammed the door shut.

 

There was a coffee table in the centre of the room covered in books, and an overflowing ashtray kept well away from the flammable tomes. Surprisingly the books all seemed to be high-end literature, old editions too, rather than the trash Clara had been expecting from the taste in music on display.

 

Looking around at the mess of clothes, CDs books and mugs littered around on the floor Clara noticed an old fashioned writing desk in the darkest corner of the room, next to even more LP shelves. It was an unexpectedly neat desk considering the state of the rest of the place. The papers on the desk looked suspiciously like poetry, and the handwriting was surprisingly old-fashioned copperplate.

 

Wait was that a trapdoor? It was very nearly concealed by the dark carpet. A trapdoor? In the TARDIS?

 

She curiously moved towards it and heaved it open. The heavy door lifted up surprisingly smoothly, but it was a hell of a weight to lever up. Oh, there was a warm glow coming from the room below. But the ladder down was a bit alarming.

 

Climbing down cautiously Clara was surprised by what she found. The cozy little room was dominated by what looked like an incredibly comfortable four-poster bed. The kind of four-poster you usually only saw in old Manor Houses, or the Harry Potter films, it was so large. It was much neater down here, nothing on the floor at least. The antique looking chest at the end of the bed was locked.

 

There was a Zippo lighter and a packet of cigarettes on the bedside table. An ugly mug being used as an ashtray. It was stained with what looked suspiciously like dried blood now that Clara had the context of the fridge. Eugh.

 

Clara rifled through the contents of the drawer, finding a fancy fountain pen, a shoebox stuffed full of photos and a journal full of poetry in the same copperplate scrawl as the papers upstairs.

 

Sitting down on the bed Clara poured over the photos. The photos seemed to feature two main groups of people, a youthful collection of teens, mostly women and an older mixed gang hanging around in what looked like an incredibly posh office. The common denominator lurking around in the background of a very select few of the photos was a sharp-edged looking man with a shock of blonde hair. He seemed to be separate from both groups, present but not integrated.

 

In one particular candid shot he was smiling happily with a young coltish brunette girl, they seemed to be playing monopoly together. Behind the pair the petite blonde that he seemed to longingly stare at in so many of the photos was wistfully gazing towards him.

 

Getting towards the end of the stack, Clara noticed that the people in the photos had changed again, this time the backgrounds became more outlandish, the kind of images Clara had gotten used to seeing on her travels with The Doctor. Oh wait - was that guy The Doctor? Clara frowned in frustration at the half-remembered memories from her time in the Doctor's timestream. She thought it might be the Byronesque look suited that incarnation. She wondered how similar he'd be to the Doctors she knew, chatty like the tall skinny suit man or quieter like the kind old granddad she'd met that day in the Black Archive? Again the blonde featured, alongside a petite woman with bright blue highlights through her hair. He seemed happier in these images, and she noticed that he'd grown out the bleach in quite a few of the photos. The dark brown of his natural hair colour suited him.

 

Clara carefully placed the photos back into their tatty little cardboard box, and shut the draw. Feeling slightly guilty for having intruded into something that seemed quite personal. She carefully made sure that everything was as she'd found it before perusing the shelves.

 

The four walls of the room were covered by bookshelves, floor to ceiling, making the place cave-like. She perused the titles on the shelves; again noticing the literary bent of the choices, there was a lot of poetry, philosophy and science texts. Though there was quite a bit of sci-fi mixed in, quite a few shelves were filled with bright, mad looking books by someone called “Terry Pratchett” and there some strange titles with names like "Witchcraft for beginners", “The Nife and Accurat Prophecies of Agnes Nitt, Witch” and "Heffer's Guide to Demonology". Seemed Mr Angular Blonde was a bit of a book collector. Quite a few of these books seemed positively ancient. Clara was curious about why this collection wasn't part of the main TARDIS library since it was all on the same ship.

 

There was a chest of draws, wardrobe and old-fashioned chest tucked into an area that had been screened by the bookshelves, which were acting like a dividing wall. This little corner was messier, there were shoes littered on the floor. And a discarded bomber jacket.

 

Clara turned to what she assumed was the bathroom and eagerly opened the door. She immediately noticed that there was no loo, or mirror. The area was bright and spotless in a marked contrast to the warm gloom of the bedroom outside. The old fashioned clawed bathtub looked opulent, freestanding as it was in the centre of the black and white tiled space, and the large copper shower-head was tempting. But she needed the loo, and Clara didn't think running water would help matters. The bathroom confirmed another thing she'd suspected, shaving gel, shaver, kohl eyeliner, plain soap, hair gel, bleach, the guy who'd lived here had been Mr Blonde Punk all right.

 

Bending down to root through the under sink cupboard Clara noted that there were enough bandages and antiseptic gear there to stock a small army. The painkillers were all on the strong side, codeine, morphine and other opiates. There was also plenty more bleach, though not all of it was of the peroxide variety.

 

She opened the wardrobe door and peered in nosily, the clothes were a schizophrenic mix of tastes, half of the wardrobe was an eclectic mix of incredibly old historical styles, Victorian, Georgian, Tudor, weird futuristic and garishly bright outfits. Was that a cat suit? It was an odd mix of some really punkish stuff, full of safety pins and holes and some incredibly posh looking suits, there was even a full white-tie ensemble. The weird red gown with the giant orange collar that'd probably go over the owner's head was particularly odd. It was all mixed in together in no apparent order. She noticed that the shoes were mostly stompy boots.

 

Hidden in the back there was a second row; the clothes were all dark in a style that Clara would recognize as modern. Black jeans, black t-shirts, dark shirts and a long black leather coat right in the back corner.

 

Clara impulsively reached out and stroked the leather coat, pulling it off of the hanger and breathing in the scent that lingered there of cigarettes, whisky and something almost spicy.

 

Turning around Clara had the fright of her life when she bumped straight into The Doctor.

 

He looked furious. Face white with rage, large blue-grey eyes flashing dangerously and the telltale tic in his jaw twitching. His attack eyebrows looked even more attacky than usual.

 

"Clara" He rolled the R in her name. "What are you doing in here?"

 

Clara nervously peered up at him, resisting the urge to take a step back, the open wardrobe right behind her. He normally reserved that quiet tone of voice for their really nasty enemies like the daleks. He was usually all loud outrage whether blustering about the deficiencies of pudding brains or soldiers.

 

"Hi! Funny story actually, the TARDIS ‘lost’ my room, _again_ , and I couldn't find the library, and I got lost…" Clara babbled her story out quickly, knowing that The Doctor really wasn't in the mood to hear yet another complaint against his beloved ship.

 

The Doctor reached out, and gently plucked the garment from her fingers, straightening out the new creases in the leather where she’d clutched at it a tad too tightly in her shock.

 

"Clara." He growled, before pausing, "No wait we shouldn't be talking in here. You shouldn't even _be_ in here. I don't know how or why you got in but we're not staying.” There was a heartbeat, then almost as an afterthought; “I’m not even sure if it’s safe."

 

The Doctor rapidly moved across the room, coat still in hand, and shimmied up the ladder, as if being chased. Clara had no choice but to follow.

 

Clara watched nervously as The Doctor almost reverently picked his way across the upstairs room, being careful not to disturb any of the items littered over the floor. She tried to do the same, it was difficult given how short she was, in places you couldn't actually tell that the floor was carpeted the stuff was laid on it so thickly.

 

They made it to the corner of the room without incident, The Doctor pulling open the door there, this one led out into a normal metallic-looking TARDIS corridor. Seemed that the mysterious room had more than one entrance. The orange lighting was comforting after the Doctor’s strange reaction. Clara turned back to shut the door, and noted that this door too had a large tent peg nail thing driven through it.

 

The Doctor rapidly walked along the corridor forcing Clara to jog to keep up, his silence echoing thunderously in her ears.

 

Eventually they wound their way through to the library, the destination that Clara had been trying to reach before the TARDIS had turned her around so many times.

 

The Doctor settled himself down into an armchair in one of the reading alcoves, and draped the leather coat with exceeding gentleness over the armrest. He stroked at one of the lapels, before visibly gathering himself, drawing mental armour up and out.

"Clara, what were you doing in there? How did you find that room?"

 

His voice was horribly soft, a mix of resignation and trepidation making uncomfortable bedfellows in his tone. She'd never seen this incarnation of her friend act like this before. He’d always been so horribly understanding of her foibles despite his apparent obliviousness to so many normal human interactions.

 

The paradox of that fact hadn’t escaped her notice, but this new level of tiredness, coupled with his earlier terrifying anger had Clara mentally treading a tightrope over a pit of verbal spikes. Somehow she could tell that the spikes weren’t mere wooden stakes, but rusty poison tipped menaces glistening with dark promise.

 

The irony of that imagery wouldn’t escape her later.

 

“What were you doing in there?”

 

The Doctor’s voice had lost its harsh edge on the repetition of the question. The terrible energy that had him vibrating so manically earlier seemed to drain out of him, leaving his face gray and his body language utterly defeated.

 

"Clara, I'm sorry. I -" The Doctor cut himself off, a pained expression on his face. "The Old Girl should never have led you on a runabout like that " He glared at the ceiling " But you really shouldn't have gone in there, that room. It belonged-"

 

Again he hesitated, unwilling to share the painful memories.

 

"Sorry, that’s not fair. You weren’t to know. Those rooms, they were archived. You weren’t supposed to be able to actually enter them at all, given that they shouldn’t” The Doctors tone changed, and he addressed the next part of the sentence pointedly at the ceiling, “physically be in sync with the rest of the TARDIS. That room was Spike's, he- _we_ \- we travelled together for a while. A long while actually, we ran together for centuries. The three of us, until The War."

 

"Oh Doctor, I'm sorry."

 

“Spike, Illyria and I, The Demon, The God and the Timelord.” He sighed heavily, “Would you believe it if I told you that The Demon eventually ended up being the one of us with the most reliable sense of right and wrong?”

 

The Doctor was distractedly stroking the leather of the coat as he talked, unwilling to meet Clara's eyes.

 

“The meadow was a little retreat for the pair of them, that Illyria deigned to share with Spike. The rooms were purely Spike’s.” He pinned her with a sudden hawk-like look “Did you find the tree chamber?”

 

The question was a loaded one, Clara could tell.

 

“Um, no.” She hazarded the truth.

 

As was this incarnations wont he rapidly changed the subject to cover whatever feelings she’d dredged up,

 

“Soldiers! Have I mentioned how much I _hate_ soldiers?”

 

“More than once yeah.”

 

“Well that’s what happened to him, off he went being a good little _soldier_.” The last word was spat like a curse, “Following _my_ orders.” A pause, a heavy swallow, “He should have known better. He _did_ know better. He’d never listened to me before…”

 

Clara felt her eyes growing suspiciously damp, as she watched her best friend torture himself with this latest facet of the complex anguish that made up his memories of the Time War. She’d naively thought they’d gotten past this, Gallifrey was out there somewhere, and the Timelords had proven that they cared.

 

She zoned back into the conversation, The Doctor was staring down at his long fingered hands, twisting the ring on his finger around and around in a nervous gesture that she’d never seen from him before.

 

"I don't actually know what happened to either of them. The last time I saw them Spike was heading off into the heart of the conflict to stop the Skaro Degradations from eating their way through all of reality, and Illyria… Blue just vanished with Romana that day. It was like they blinked out of existence the pair of them, And Spike… If he'd died all I'd manage to find would be Dust, he wouldn't have left a corpse even if he hadn't fallen where the whole of reality wasn't screaming around the epicenter."

 

The Doctor heaved a heavy sigh, and kneaded at his eyes with his fingers.

 

"So you see Clara, those rooms-” The Doctor had picked up the coat and was hugging it gently "they're all I have left to remember them by, old memories and dust. I don't think they'll be there even if we do manage to restore Gallifrey."

 

He looked up at her then with red-rimmed eyes, an expression longing for some small shred of comfort on his aquiline face, a small boy feeling utterly helpless in the face of such awful knowledge.

 

Clara immediately crossed the distance between their chairs and engulfed him in a hug, just as he’d comforted her through the raw open wound that was the guilt and rage at Danny’s loss. She could no longer remember if she was going to break up with him or declare Official Long-term Relationship Status during that awful phone call anymore.

 

Just as The Doctor had been there for her during her rage and her hate, she’d help him weather this storm. Yet another chapter in his life prematurely closed by the Time War.

 

**Author's Note:**

> To anyone looking for Guilt For Dreaming stuff - this isn't a distraction from that, just a result of me sorting out my files to make it easier to find stuff!
> 
> Not beta read, all mistakes are my own. You can't have them I tell you they're mine!!
> 
> In case anyone didn't know what the x-over was - Buffy. 
> 
> My ridiculous idea entailed taking full advantage of the fact that Captain John Hart and Spike were played by the same actor, as well as the fact that Twelve was also Caecilius and John Frobisher... 
> 
> There was even an adventure romp set at Tyburn. Planned out long before the subpar, unconvincing, and decidedly shrunken appearance the Triple Tree made in S9, but I digress.


End file.
